What is Cancer?
Definitions• A class of diseases
characterized by malignant growth of a group of cells– Growth is uncontrolled– Invasive and Damaging– Often able to metastasize
• An instance of such a disease (a malignant tumor)
• A disease of the genome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/tatiah/Pictures%20Library/normal%20male%20karyotyping.jpg
What is Cancer?
Definitions• A class of diseases
characterized by malignant growth of a group of cells– Growth is uncontrolled– Invasive and Damaging– Often able to metastasize
• An instance of such a disease (a malignant tumor)
• A disease of the genome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer http://www.moffitt.org/CCJRoot/v2n5/artcl2img4.gif
Fundamental Changes in Cancer Cell Physiology
Evasion of anti-cancer control mechanisms• Apoptosis (e.g. p53)• Antigrowth signals (e.g. pRb)• Cell Senescence
Hanahan and Weinberg. 2000. The hallmarks of cancer. Cell 100: 57-70.
Exploitation of natural pathways for cellular growth• Growth Signals (e.g. TGF family)• Angiogenesis• Tissue Invasion & Metastasis
Acceleration of Cellular Evolution Via Genome Instability• DNA Repair• DNA Polymerase
Many Paths Lead to Cancer Self-Sufficiency
Hanahan, Douglas, and Ra Weinberg. 2000. The hallmarks of cancer. Cell 100: 57-70.
Why Sequence Cancer Genomes?
• Better understand cancer biology– Pathway information– Types of mutations found in
different cancers
Why Sequence Cancer Genomes?
• Better understand cancer biology– Pathway information– Types of mutations found in
different cancers
• Cancer Diagnosis– Genetic signatures of cancer types will
inform diagnosis– Non-invasive means of detecting or
confirming presence of cancer
• Improve cancer therapies– Targeted treatment of cancer subtypes
http://www.sanger.ac.uk/genetics/CGP/cosmic/
Forbes et al. 2010. COSMIC: mining complete cancer genomes in the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer. Nucleic Acids Research 39, no. Database (October): D945-D950
4577043
639580
186431
12441
19885
7062
2753
465
Human Genome Variation
SNP TGCTGAGATGCCGAGA Novel Sequence TGCTCGGAGA
TGC - - - GAGA
Inversion Mobile Element orPseudogene Insertion
Translocation Tandem Duplication
Microdeletion TGC - - AGATGCCGAGA Transposition
Large Deletion Novel Sequenceat Breakpoint
TGC
Variant TypesVariant Types
Single Nucleotide Variants(SNVs)
Small Insertion / Deletion (indels)
Copy Number Variants (CNVs)
Structural Variants (SVs)
Novel Sequence
SNVs
ATCTATCCGAGTCGATCGATAGATGATGTCTAGGATAGATGATRef:
ATCTATCCGAGTCTATCGATAGATGATGTCTAGGATAGATGAT
ATCTATCCGAGTCTATCGATAGATGATGTCTAGGATAGATGAT
Variant Types
Single Nucleotide Variants(SNVs)
Small Insertion / Deletion (indels)
Copy Number Variants (CNVs)
Structural Variants (SVs)
Novel Sequence
SNV Calling Approaches
• A Bayesian Approach is the most general and common method of calling SNVs– MAQ, SOAPsnp, Genome Analyis ToolKit
(GATK), SAMtools
• But we would rather use a cancer specific method!
http://www.broadinstitute.org/gsa/wiki/index.php/Unified_genotyper
Variant Types
Single Nucleotide Variants(SNVs)
Small Insertion / Deletion (indels)
Copy Number Variants (CNVs)
Structural Variants (SVs)
Novel Sequence
• Factors that effect mutation signal– Limited genetic material (lower depth)– Mixture of tumor and normal tissue– Cancer Heterogeneity
• Factors that introduce noise– Formalin-fixed and Paraffin-embedded samples– Increased number of mutations and unusual genomic rearrangements
• General Consideration– Each individual has many unique mutations that could be confused with
cancer causing mutations
Considerations for Cancer Sequencing
SNV Calling Approaches
• SNVMix: example of using a graphical model for SNV calling
Goya et al. 2010. SNVMix: predicting single nucleotide variants from next-generation sequencing of tumors. Bioinformatics (Oxford, England) 26, no. 6 (March)
Variant Types
Single Nucleotide Variants(SNVs)
Small Insertion / Deletion (indels)
Copy Number Variants (CNVs)
Structural Variants (SVs)
Novel Sequence
Targeted Sequencing
Capture Methods vs. Shotgun• Targeted sequencing allows for much
higher coverage at less cost• Most methods can only capture known
sites• These methods also introduce
significant captures bias, include failure to capture sites that differ significantly from the reference genome.
Modified from Meyerson et al. . 2010. Advances in understanding cancer genomes through second-generation sequencing. Nature Reviews Genetics 11, no. 10 (October): 685-696
ExomeLibrary
ShotgunLibrary
Genomic DNAExon 1 Exon 2
Indel Calling
ATCTATCCGAGTCGATCGATAGATGATGTCTAGGATAGATGATRef:ATCTATCCGA-------GATAGATGATGTCTAGGATAGATGAT
AGTT
ATCTATCCGAGATAGATGATGTCTAAGTTGGATAGATGAT
^
Variant Types
Single Nucleotide Variants(SNVs)
Small Insertion / Deletion (indels)
Copy Number Variants (CNVs)
Structural Variants (SVs)
Novel Sequence
A Brief and Pertinent DigressionPaired-End Read Mapping
Modified from Meyerson et al. . 2010. Advances in understanding cancer genomes through second-generation sequencing. Nature Reviews Genetics 11, no. 10 (October): 685-696
Indel Calling – Discordant Paired Reads
R
G
II) Deletion
I) Insertion
R
Gi
d
m1
m1
m1’
m1’
m2 m2’
m2 m2’
l
l - i
l + d
l
Variant Types
Single Nucleotide Variants(SNVs)
Small Insertion / Deletion (indels)
Copy Number Variants (CNVs)
Structural Variants (SVs)
Novel Sequence
Copy Number Variants
Ref: A B C D E F G H I K
A B C D C E F G H C I K
A B C D C E F G H C I K
Variant Types
Single Nucleotide Variants(SNVs)
Small Insertion / Deletion (indels)
Copy Number Variants (CNVs)
Structural Variants (SVs)
Novel Sequence
Copy Number Variants
Ref: A B C D E F G H I K
A B C D C E F G H C I K
C C C
C Depth of Coverage
Modified from Dalca and Brudno. 2010. Genome variation discovery with high-throughput sequencing data. Briefings in bioinformatics 11, no. 1: 3-14
Variant Types
Single Nucleotide Variants(SNVs)
Small Insertion / Deletion (indels)
Copy Number Variants (CNVs)
Structural Variants (SVs)
Novel Sequence
• Problems with DOC – Very sensitive to stochastic variance in coverage– Sensitive to bias coverage (e.g. GC content).– Impossible to determine non-reference locations of CNVs
• Graph methods using paired-end reads help overcome some of these problems
Copy Number Variants
Ref: A B C D E F G H I K
A B C D C E F G H C I K
C C C
C Depth of Coverage
Variant Types
Single Nucleotide Variants(SNVs)
Small Insertion / Deletion (indels)
Copy Number Variants (CNVs)
Structural Variants (SVs)
Novel Sequence
Variant Types
Ref: A B C D E F G H I K
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
4 G I K1 2 3
1 2 4 3 5 6 7 8
Structural Rearrangement
Translocation
3 2 1 5 6 7 8 Inversion
1 3 5 9 6 7 8 Large Insertion / Deletion
2̂
Variant Types
Single Nucleotide Variants(SNVs)
Small Insertion / Deletion (indels)
Copy Number Variants (CNVs)
Structural Variants (SVs)
Novel Sequence
Summary of Variant Types
Meyerson et al. . 2010. Advances in understanding cancer genomes through second-generation sequencing. Nature Reviews Genetics 11, no. 10 (October): 685-696
Passenger Mutations and Driver Mutations
Stratton, Michael R, Peter J Campbell, and P Andrew Futreal. 2009. The cancer genome. Nature 458, no. 7239 (April): 719-24. doi:10.1038/nature07943
Passenger Mutations and Driver Mutations
Distinguishing Features• Presence in many tumors• Predicted to have functional
impact on the cell– Conserved– Not seen in healthy adults
(rare)– Predicted to affect protein
structure
• In pathways known to be involved in cancer
Train Classifier using Machine Learning Approaches
Carter et al. 2009. Cancer-specific high-throughput annotation of somatic mutations: computational prediction of driver missense mutations. Cancer research, no. 16: 6660-6667
So, What Have We Learned about Cancer?
Meyerson et al. . 2010. Advances in understanding cancer genomes through second-generation sequencing. Nature Reviews Genetics 11, no. 10 (October): 685-696
So, What Have We Learned about Cancer?
Human cancer is caused by the accumulation of mutations in oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. To catalog the genetic changes that occur during tumorigenesis, we isolated DNA from 11 breast and 11 colorectal tumors and determined the sequences of the genes in the Reference Sequence database in these samples. Based on analysis of exons representing 20,857 transcripts from 18,191 genes, we conclude that the genomic landscapes of breast and colorectal cancers are composed of a handful of commonly mutated gene “mountains” and a much larger number of gene “hills” that are mutated at low frequency. We describe statistical and bioinformatic tools that may help identify mutations with a role in tumorigenesis. These results have implications for understanding the nature and heterogeneity of human cancers and for using personal genomics for tumor diagnosis and therapy.
So, What Have We Learned about Cancer?
But improvements in sequencing technology are rapidly overcoming these problems
So, What Have We Learned about Cancer?
Integrated genomic analyses of ovarian carcinomaThe Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network
A catalogue of molecular aberrations that cause ovarian cancer is critical for developing and deploying therapies that will improve patients’ lives. The Cancer Genome Atlas project has analysed messenger RNA expression, microRNA expression, promoter methylation and DNA copy number in 489 high-grade serous ovarian adenocarcinomas and the DNA sequences of exons from coding genes in 316 of these tumours. Here we report that high-grade serous ovarian cancer is characterized by TP53 mutations in almost all tumours (96%); low prevalence but statistically recurrent somatic mutations in nine further genes including NF1, BRCA1, BRCA2, RB1 and CDK12; 113 significant focal DNA copy number aberrations; and promoter methylation events involving 168 genes. Analyses delineated four ovarian cancer transcriptional subtypes, three microRNA subtypes, four promoter methylation subtypes and a transcriptional signature associated with survival duration, and shed new light on the impact that tumours with BRCA1/2 (BRCA1 or BRCA2) and CCNE1aberrations have on survival. Pathway analyses suggested that homologous recombination is defective in about half of the tumours analysed, and that NOTCH and FOXM1 signalling are involved in serous ovarian cancer pathophysiology.
• Fantastic Cancer Review– Hanahan and Weinberg. 2000. The hallmarks of cancer. Cell 100: 57-70.
• Modern Reviews of Cancer Genomics– Meyerson, Matthew, Stacey Gabriel, and Gad Getz. 2010. Advances in understanding
cancer genomes through second-generation sequencing. Nature Reviews Genetics 11, no. 10 (October): 685-696. doi:10.1038/nrg2841. http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/nrg2841.
– Stratton, Michael R, Peter J Campbell, and P Andrew Futreal. 2009. The cancer genome. Nature 458, no. 7239 (April): 719-24. doi:10.1038/nature07943. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19360079.
• Variant Calling– Dalca, Adrian V, and Michael Brudno. 2010. Genome variation discovery with high-
throughput sequencing data. Briefings in bioinformatics 11, no. 1 (January): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20053733.
– Medvedev, Paul, Monica Stanciu, and Michael Brudno. 2009. Computational methods for discovering structural variation with next-generation sequencing. nature methods 6, no. 11 http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v6/n11s/full/nmeth.1374.html.
Further Readings for the Curious